1. The sword is more truthful than books
In its edge lies the distinction between jest and earnest

2. The whiteness of blades, not the blackness of pages
In their texts lies the clarity from doubt and suspicion

3. And knowledge lies in the flashing spears
Not in the seven stars and their alignment

4. Where are the stories, rather where are the stars and what
they fabricated in them of ornament and lies

5. Prattling and patched up tales
That are neither confirmable if counted nor strange

6. Wonders they claimed the days concealed
In the empty months or Rajab

7. And frightened people of ominous darkness
When the western planet with tail becomes visible

8. And made the highest mansions ordered
Whether moving or fixed

9. They judge the matter about them while they are heedless
What revolved in an orbit or pole among them

10. If a star ever clarified a matter before its occurrence
It would not conceal what befell the idols and crucifixes

11. So the openings of openings, exalted is He who encompasses it
A prose of poetry or prose of sermons

12. An opening whose doors the heavens opened for it
And the earth emerges in her coarse clothing

13. O day of the battle of Amorium, from you
wishes returned oozing with softened butter

14. You left the backbone of the children of Islam in peaks
And the polytheists and the land of polytheism in plains

15. A mother to them, if they hoped she could be ransomed, they would ransom her
with every mother among them and father

16. And the barefaced one, her worship exhausted her
Kisra and she built barriers against Abu Karib

17. Bikr, so no palm of events could snatch him
Nor any ambition of time could reach him

18. Since the era of Alexander or before that indeed
the temples of nights grew old while still unaged

19. Until when Allah delivered for it the years in birth pangs
It birthed the essence of eras

20. There came to them a black affliction raging
from it, and its name was the relief of afflictions

21. Fate ran well for it the day of Ankara
When it was demolished, desolate of plains and expanses

22. When it saw its sister yesterday destroyed
Destruction was more hateful to it than scabies

23. How many valiant cavaliers between its walls
Whose hands run red from the blood they shed

24. By the law of sword and war, not the law of religion and Islam
Adorning themselves with blood

25. Indeed you left the Commander of the Faithful in it
For the fire, humbled rocks and trees

26. Abandoning in it animals by night, while by day
Dawn from flames enfeebles it

27. Until it was as if the robes of darkness were disgusted
By its color, as if the sun never set

28. A glow from fire, and darkness stationed
And darkness from smoke at dawn wan

29. So the sun is rising from this, and it had set
And the sun is obligated from that, and did not oblige

30. Fate disclosed to it clearly like clouds
Of a day of tumult in it, pure, ritually cleansed

31. The sun did not rise in it that day upon
Inhabited or uninhabited ruins

32. What a cultivated quarter of Mayyafariqin revolving around it
More beautiful maiden camels than its ruined quarter

33. Nor cheeks, made rosy from shyness
More pleasing to my eyes than its dusty cheek

34. An intoxication they deprived our eyes with
From all beauty occurring or wondrous sight

35. And the beauty of reversal, its consequences remain
Its cheer came from the evil of reversal

36. If disbelief knew how many eras
Fate knotted for it between rocks and sticks

37. Al-Mu'tasim's management, with Allah avenging
For Allah awaiting, in Allah coveting

38. And feeding victory, tongues did not silence for him
A day, nor was the breath of the secluded veiled from him

39. He did not raid a people nor march against a land
Except an army of dread preceded him

40. If he did not lead a horde on the day of strife
He would suffice alone in a horde unbreakable

41. Allah cast you at its two towers so you demolished them
And had another than Allah cast you, you would not hit

42. After they fortified it, trusting in it
Yet Allah is key to the gate of the unassailable fortress

43. And their commander said no pasturing cows
For the steeds released, and the roses are not from foam

44. Hopes robbed them, the delusions of their brooding
Drew them to the blades of swords and spearheads

45. Verily the two doves, white and brown
Misguided the two snakes, of water and vegetation

46. You cried a zebra-like voice, for it
You poured the cup of vintages and robes of fleece

47. None but you, protector of the boiling frontiers against
the cold of frontiers, and their chains the witnesses

48. You answered it declaring with the sword, slaughtering
And had you answered with other than sword, you would not answer

49. Until you left the pillar of polytheism furious
And did not detour to the tent pegs and sticks

50. When Theophilus saw war in the eyes' view
And war derived in meaning from war

51. He went to spend his money on its fines
Yet the sea with currents and depths frustrated him

52. Alas! The solid earth was not shaken by him
From the invasion of an earner, not usurper

53. He did not spend the gold producing in its abundance
On gravel, yet in poverty to gold

54. Indeed the black lions, their ambition
On the day of hate is in the plundered, not the plunder

55. He turned, and the war stopped his speech
With a silence, beneath which his entrails roared

56. His steeds went off redirecting calamity, and he went
Urging on the best of his horses in flight

57. Entrusting the ground's aid, raised by
Lightness of fear, not lightness of vein

58. If he counts the hot dark one as his enemy, then you
Widened its burner from the abundant fuels

59. Ninety thousand like lions of evil, their skins
Ripened before the ripening of figs and grapes

60. O Lord of Al-Hawba when their roots were torn out
It was pleasant, and if steeped in musk still unpleasant

61. And wrathful the whites of swords returned with it
To the abode of contentment by their repulse, deadened of rage

62. And war persists in narrow, deep straits
Standing in it seems small to knees

63. How much soft smoothness beneath its brilliance
And beneath its cheek from soft cheek

64. How many in cutting the ties of necks through it
To the numb virgin were cause

65. How many staffs of Indians did it reap balanced
Shaken by staves shaken between bundles

66. Whites when drawn from their veils return
More deserving of whiteness than the veils

67. Caliph of Allah, may Allah reward your effort against
The rabble of religion, Islam, and legitimacy

68. You saw the great comfort yet did not see it
Attained except over a bridge of exhaustion

69. If there is among the twists of fate a womb
Connected or unsevered bond

70. Then between your days you were given victory in
And the days of Badr the closest lineage

71. It left the jaundiced sons of jaundice as their name
Yellow of faces, and the faces of Arabs beamed